Yesterday, I reached an impasse with the Think Like A Mink programming project. I hit a wall with ember.js and was either too frustrated or too lethargic to deal with it. In the past, especially in a employment environment, such frustrations have led to stress. I am further carried upon the stream to unproductive agitation when this occurs. I have found that stepping back from a project for even a few days is the best solution. I shall do that now.

(ember.js)

Of course, when pondering this topic, Stonecrop and Steve come to mind. I’m all for planning and creativity, but Steve took it to an extreme. I believe others had the same problem I did with his methodology. As far as I know, he carries on this very day with the same hovno.

Research and design can only come so far. Perpetual research and design is ultimately distructive to productivity. If the end goal is to vomit out ideas but never implement them, I’d not be typing this on this very fine piece of word processing software called Vim. The denizens of Stonecrop, however, could not stop. Thus - the product was sloppy, irresponsive and ultimately a lumbering hunk of machinery without any aesthetic form.

(Vim)

When Jeremy and I decided to do something about the hack process, we were shot down over and over again by the quick and dirty attitude that pervaded the company (I laughingly call it that). Idealists to the marrow, we soldiered on and created the basis for a product that could flexibly expand to greatness. Fruition did not happen. The Mountain Weasel is dormant. I suspect she is only hibernating.

Think Like A Mink is wholly different. I am just stepping back for a day or two. My first goal when stepping forward again will be to deal with these few issues:

• Ember Data Store and its Promise mechanism.
• Pluralization rules gone awry (User model).
• Returning the current user via authorization key.
• Breeding Palm Civets in a fossilized Ground Sloth’s bladder.

Since Think Like A Mink is on hold for today, I shall carry on with the Flavigula musical project. The next piece will not follow directly from The Fen and Hela…, but will contain vocals. Yes, I must convince Christián to sing it.

(Palm Civets)
(Ground Sloth’s)

If this will be the case, there is the consideration of lyrics. After reading the liner notes to Le Poison Qui Rend Fou two days ago, I’m going to go with Roger Trigaux’s premise that any sufficiently meaningful lyrics will take away from the composition itself. They will readjust the focus to something that is not my intention. So, whether I create the words or I just hand that job over to Christián (him willing, samozřejmě), their nature is to be whimsical.

I only have a vague notion of how the piece will run. As with every piece of music I have ever created, its shape will contort into something previously unimagined during the composition process. Another element I need to pay more attention to is the actual timbral variety and mixing. I am decidedly sloppy at especially the latter. Improvement is needed or punishment involving cysts on my uvula. Perhaps I can have my pyloric sphyncter bifurcated. Humans are in need of another path of excretion. I’ll lead the way into a new age of hominid morphology.

Having listened many times to Richard Pinhas’s new album Desolation Row, I shall opt for a moog-like sequence percolating behind what will most probably come to be chord sequences. I may toy with creating a melody over no chord sequence, but am unsure how that would turn out. Linear counterpoint is fun, but not really in the spirit of these Flavigula sessions.

(DesolationRow)

What is that spirit?

It is the spirit of aleatoric composition.

Today’s special writing music is Open by The Necks. I am pretty sure that my parents will interrupt me during the piece, as it is approximately one hour long.

Yesterday, I spent most of my productive time grinding my molars on the bones of a Palm Civet. That is, I was getting authentication to function on the previously named Radiotracking site. The new moniker is, of course, Think Like A Mink. Though my journal is currently also hosted here, the main point of purchasing the domain name was to have a stable place to host all things related to Project Lutreola and whatever I decide to call Madis’s pursuits in the Ebro valley.

(Project Lutreola)

My fingernails are encrusted with blue.

I finally, after trying the roll yer own method and ember-auth, I went with ember-simple-auth, as it is complient to openid hovno and I suspect I should have learned that standard (by standard, I mean hovno) long ago. After allowing myself to be authenticated, I pushed the repository and became lackadaisical for the remainder of the evening. I even ate some potato chips. I purged afterwards.

(ember-simple-auth)

Today, I need to finally put together some sort of roles / permissions per user. This moment is meant as a brainstorming session.

• Users are associated with a project.
• Users can be associated with multiple projects.
• Projects are associated with organization.

Tiit wrote the other day:

YES, UNDER ONE ORGANIZATION SEVERAL PROJECTS. I WONDERS IS THERE SOME SORT OF SITUATION WHEN TWO ORGANISATIONS ARE JOINTLY RUNNING A PROJECT, THEN ONE IS LEAD-ORGANISATION.

If I go with this method, however, then my current hierarchy (though not fully realized programmatically) will be reversed. Projects will be the peak carving on the totem pole. Organizations will point to them. Users will be associated with both, independently.

Ugh.

Furthermore, animals could be associated with various projects. I don’t see as much of a problem with achieving this, however. Right now, when an animal is returned from the database, one gets the following json:

{
  "animal_id": 2675,
  "frequency": 442,
  "nickname": "Magda",
  "sex": "Female",
  "birthdate": "2012-05-18 00:00:00",
  "release_date": "2012-08-25 00:00:00",
  "microchip": "233388",
  "enclosure_type": "",
  "release_site": "",
  "remarks": "",
  "release_location_N": 0,
  "release_location_E": 0,
  "deathdate": "2113-05-10 00:00:00",
  "cause_of_death": "",
  "species_id": 1,
  "project_id": 1,
  "id": "5",
  "species": {
    "name": "mustela lutreola",
    "id": "1"
  },
  "project": {
    "name": "saaremaa 2012",
    "abbr": "s2",
    "organization_id": 1,
    "createdAt": "2014-01-06T02:47:31.610Z",
    "updatedAt": "2014-01-06T02:47:31.610Z",
    "id": "1",
    "organization": {
      "name": "project lutreola",
      "abbr": "pl",
      "createdAt": "2014-01-06T02:44:51.935Z",
      "updatedAt": "2014-01-06T02:44:51.935Z",
      "id": "1"
    }
  }
}

This butters my muffin dandily. If the animal is associated with more than one project, then I can turn “project” into “projects” and dump an array. That’s about as cute as the Palm Civet I just flayed, boned and chewed.

Users can be associated with animals, also. I’ll create a “keepers” (or just “users”) key that holds an array of them. Following Tiit’s comment, however, one user will most likely be the leader.

When I hit the url /projects, I get something like the following…

{
  "projects": [
    {
      "name": "saaremaa 2012",
      "abbr": "s2",
      "organization_id": 1,
      "createdAt": "2014-01-06T02:47:31.610Z",
      "updatedAt": "2014-01-06T02:47:31.610Z",
      "id": "1",
      "organization": {
        "name": "project lutreola",
        "abbr": "pl",
        "createdAt": "2014-01-06T02:44:51.935Z",
        "updatedAt": "2014-01-06T02:44:51.935Z",
        "id": "1"
      },
      "animals": [ ... ]
    }, ...
  ]
}

I’ll replace “organization” with “organizations” and shove an array in there, supplanting the dastardly object or hash or whatever it’s called these days in the fecund land of javascript naming conventions. I should just call it Tasty Palm Civet Marrow. So, the array I’ll shove in there will be full of tasty palm civet marrow.

Organizations will result in a similar layout.

Looking and listening back on my realization of The Fen a few days back, I’d like that plucked violin to be replaced with an actual instrument. My avid reader may recall that I mentioned a mandolin was originally intended there.

(TheFen)

I’ll approach Christián or Ryan about it today. There will be a few rules they’d have to follow, however, in doing the deed. It must be a note by note rendition, of course, and no flourishes or improvisation is allowed. They’d be free to choose timbre, though, as long as it complimented (and certainly did not interfere with) the rhodes part.

The screechy bit at the end could also call for a maniacal distorted guitar over the bass and harmonium. I’ll approach Ryan with that one, as I do not think Christián has an electric with him. In fact, I don’t even know if he has a guitar with him at all in the foul pit that calls itself Myrtle Beach.

I shall inquire.

I began listening to Zaar’s debut and only album beinning on track two so that when it arrived to track six, I’d have already begun this entry. Not so! I was dealing with an email concerning my new flat in Logroño. Yes, and the correspondence is in Español, so it takes my watery brain more time to processes and compose.

So, we’re on track six. The name of the track is Omk, and I find that name very descriptive of the music therein. It’s a meandering piece. It runs for over seventeen minutes. I’ve listened to it in the background numerous times, but never sat and absorbed it on headphones. At least I don’t recall doing so.

I should mention at this point, as an aside, that I received this CD from Wayside in December of 2006. Michal chose to visit me in Brno later in the month. As predicted by the whorling constellations as seen from the depths of Andromeda’s super-massive black hole, I loaned said CD to him. Samozřejmě, I have not seen it since. So, it may as well belong to Michal at this point. Heh. I hope Mirka is playing it perpetually to Bart in his cradle. Aural education!

(Wayside)

Omk has reached one of what I term a floating point. A steady drone paints the backdrop as the guitar, drums and hurdy-gurdy percolate in the foreground. These floating points sometimes build slowly to become another thematic statement. At other times, the following thematic statement just crashes in obliterating the ambience. This particular one chose the former method.

In my novel November, a long, meandering scene sees Shambal and our favourite protagonist sitting in a café in New York City. They are the only occupants. Well, they are the only non-imaginary occupants. Actually, that is not exactly right, either, since the scene takes place after the protagonist has died.

Note to reader: Dying in November’s world and your world are not precisely the same.

Omk has reached another floating point - one that actually ends the piece. Everything spins. There is a central, shall we say, vortex, but it is never touched by the instruments. They dance around it. The final snare hit which ends everything can be thought of as everything being suddenly sucked into this vortex. That super-massive black hole gets sick of the repetition. Silence.

Approximately seventeen minutes have passed.

Many habitual actions fluster me. I don’t recall sometimes if I’ve taken my antibiotic capsule or not. I have strange sticking feeling in my throat. This indicates that I probably did take it, but I have no actual recollection of the action. The deed was either immediately deleted from my short-term memory or wasn’t recorded in the first place.

I am bot

HE

red by

SUCH MENTAL INADEQUACIES

Many habitual actions are useful, including most all things related to muscle memory, but deliberacies such as the aforementioned pill taking are frightening. For example, it is bothersome to not recall if one sucked down a tab of LSD half an hour ago or not when a few more are scattered on the bar amidst the bottles of vodka, beer and ether.

Approximately no minutes have passed.

I’d be pleased to live in the flat I mentioned earlier. The location is here.

(here)

In Tuzla, I also lived in a studio and was pleased. I’m not one to need much space. If someone does end up coming to visit (such as that cretin, Christián), they have a sofa on which to slumber and surely soil. Not to say that I am against soiling things. I’ve soiled a good number of sleeping places in my day. In fact, some were soiled so badly with grease from my filthy body that they were subsequently used as pyres or foci in furnaces to heat the homes of millions of poverty stricken rodents on the oceanic islands. Those fuckers always get shipwrecked.

(Christián)

The subject of this entry is not very indicative of its contents. My surly reader will most likely note that this is a common trait in my journals. Speaking of writing music, however, we are back at the first track of Zaar’s initial and only album. The title is Sefir. Michal and I listened intently to this one and he commented that after the current floating point (however, he did not use that phrase), the following building theme (beginning at this very moment) reminded him of King Crimson. Surely he meant Starless. I can see that, though the tonality is more Henry Cow-like to my leaky ears.

You gotta love that shrieking hurdy-gurdy.

Shambal and the beloved protagonist discuss the metaphor of the music cascading from some ambient point all about them. The piano is footstep by footstep around a constricted space. I don’t plan to mention the name of the piece in the book, but anyone familiar with latter 20th century classical music will most likely guess.

The first three movements are on repeat as I write that chapter (I laughingly call it a chapter) of the novel. The music moves my fingers to write in the same stumbling manner that the piano plays. The footsteps steady and the two characters discuss creativity and constriction. Art made in a bubble is only valid once the bubble is pierces. But, ironically, it loses its meaning when that happens.

The relevance to the author is never the same as to the listener, try though the latter may to interpret the original intent. The quartet is made from circumstance as much as from the mind of its author. All creative acts are part of their context. They are then taken out of their context and applied to a new context. Abstractions become concrete, but the solidification takes different shapes.

Pop has a more universal appeal because it is more trasparent. Easily, a pug-nose wench in Bolivia can relate as well as a drug-dealer in Berlin. The more opaque the liquid one drowns in, the more intense the experience, however. Magnificent abstractions create more complex and overall compelling tangibility.

The orginal intent may be lost, ultimately, but, again, the more opaque the abstraction, the more of a shadow it casts.

Fuck translucence.

Attempting to frown again, he reads over what he last wrote.

“Nataša is righting the slobbering creature in the corner of the studio. It grunts and licks at her. She breathes a futile harumph. The thing’s due to be on the air in thirty minutes and is clearly not ready. Half dressed and clearly stoned on some inebriating substance, one eye ogles her neckline while the other rolls eerily. She pulls at the ring on her left hand. She always does when her immediate desires do not come to fruition.

“She slaps at the drool easing from holes in the thing’s face and it splatters patterns like play-fighting ferrets on the bluish studio wall. She watches them run down into more ominous shapes and then leaves to cancel each payment made during this and the previous morning.

“She is wet between her legs, but not because of the obvious allure of the beast’s virility. She reviews a dream from the night before. It was filed away until the moment she noticed the wetness. I must do much and travel far before I enter the pool, she thinks. The creature sees her die. He is alone in the room.”

He doesn’t remember writing any of it.

I wrote The Fen when I was in New Cross Gate. One of its parts was supposed to be played on mandolin, but I never performed it to my satisfaction, the anal retentive twat that I am. I am revisiting it now.

(New CrossGate)

The initial problem with this part, which repeats once, is the attack / volume of the so-called Rhodes. I added phase and distortion to remedy that. Also, before this bit, whilst the dirgelike stomp is going on (and, indeed, before it), I added Hela. Yes, Hela. I took a small clip from a voice message she sent me last month and stretched it to 20 times its length. I then reversed it and mixed the two. The result is eerily beautiful.

Maintaining the same timbre between tracks in LMMS is becoming a problem. Perhaps there are unseen settings that affect parameters manipulated by me over three years ago. Ah! Well, part of this composition will be an injection of aleatoric aesthetics.

(LMMS)

Where the fuck is that hissing buzz coming from?

I discovered earlier that Crossover Distortion can be fantastically noisy. I have employed it in the piece.

As I was riding in the pickup truck with my father on the way to the grocery store, I thought of the track that will follow The Fen. The name will be The Bog or possibly Silt. Or even I Swabbed Your Pet Gerbil’s Anus With a Fossilized Paramecium. My idea is this: firstly, layer many tracks of Hela’s voice strectched and contracted, forming chords. If plausible, create some bastardized version of the melody in the introduction of The Fen to swim erratically through the resulting sonic morass. Provide accompaniment consisting of mid-range distorted bass and the aformentioned Crossover Distortion of the pizzicato violin.

Fortunately, a part had been left unwritten. The erstwhile mandolin part of the second “verse” (I laughingly call it that) now exists. The counterpoint to the Rhodes part penned (I laughingly call it that) three and a half years ago contains many fun dissonaces. Only a select few were planned. I leave the rest because it is one of the wondrous features of aleatoric composition.

The final mixdown using Audacity, and as I remember, tends to muddle the sound a bit, although I did a bit of noise reduction, as well, so that may be the culprit. Where, in the name of the pungent liver of Jesus, did that buzzzzzzzzzz come from, anyhow?

(Audacity)

The Fen is at this very moment uploading (itself - yes, it is a sentient being - fens are living ecospheres, don’t’cha know, ya leper?) to Soundcloud. I haven’t used Soundcloud for years, so deleted several tracks on the siralfrediv account. I tagged the mixed down flac with the artist Flavigula. My electronic and / or electroacoustic music will be under this moniker. In fact, I should create an entrely new Soundcloud account for these purposes.

Yah.

The Fen

(The Fen)

But you are a hologram.

Oh, you can believe that if you wish. It’s all the same to me. In fact, I can easily assume that you are also a hologram.

But I’m not made of well placed patterns of light. I’m made of sinews, various liquids, and a revolting stench which always precedes me.

You got that last part right, at least. Sit down with me. I’ll shut off the idiot-box. IDIOT-BOX. Don’t they call it that where you come from?

I don’t come from anywhere. I was a test tube baby.

I hope you see the contradiction in those two sentences.

You seem unreasonably chipper considering your woman left you for some other surely more pumped hologram.

I’m suppressing it.

Huh. Supressing it? Your words make me think back to a time when I sat in a restaurant / bar somewhere in Texas. A waitress named Samantha worked there. She had a bizarre tattoo on her ankle. I cannot at the moment recall what exactly it was. It was bizarre, however. Truly. Every time I (or one of my companions) would make an absurd comment implying we’d soon do something decidedly shifty, she’d say “Suppress it.”

You see? My presence is already stimulating your memory. Can you give me an example of one of these absurdities?

Yah. For example, I’d say to Samantha - “I have the intense desire to impale that drooling, wheelchaired, obese man on my salad fork.” And she’d say - “Suppress it.”

The creature makes a low grunt.

Or, Acy would state - “I feel the need to slather the mayonaisse from Jason’s burger onto the left leg of my jeans then rip their remaining tatters violently apart, leaving most of the lower half of my body naked and exposing to the clamouring restaurant clientele my uniquely extreme hairiness.” And Samantha would retort - “Suppress it.”

This Acy is not actually exhibiting a part of his personality in this description, but accessing the thread of the situation that surrounds him. Perhaps a better way to put it would be that he is joined with Samantha (and the rest of you) in a synergy. You are a mass of flesh and thought, unseparable. You see, individualism in unique humans does not exist. Only a sequence of a vast array of individuals exist that are contextual in nature. One dies and another is born nearly immediately. These various states of being are conglomerates. Your concept of individual misses that they are actually just one dimensional changelings who morph perpetually as they conjoin and retract.

The piano plays a recurring theme, though it is not excatly recurring. It is an example of who were are right now. We are wandering. We do the same things over and over without question. We are stained by the purpose. The purpose is to stay the same. We can create, whilst we are here, but nothing we create will last outside of where we are. It is a box. Sealed. To break out of what we are is to be not what we are. For the splinters may ahnnihilate us.

Shambal appears more tired than he’d ever seen him. His friend is weary beyond years. We are beyond years, he thinks. The disconsolate darkness we just left behind was our death - or our passing.

A feeling of loss crosses his face. Shambal notices, and like a yawn, begins to share the same expression. He sits erect in a wooden chair. It is time to begin asking questions.

We seem to be the only ones in our chosen place of beverage seeking.

But they both hear a shuffle from behind a translucent wall. A shadow shuffles, magnifies and recedes. Perfume wafts through the room.

You are wrong, as usual, you leprous swine. A serving wench will soon arrive to bring us surely anything we desire. I smell her stench.

You have no idea how much money threw into the void on sweet scents for my ex-woman.

Your EX-WOMAN? You sure she’s not around here somewhere, that Karla? Hey! Perhaps it is here behind yonder bulkhead!

Look, shitface. Don’t fuck with me. It was a learning experience. I’ve moved on. I’m a better person because of it.

The shadow flickers and flits, glides and morphs. A tentacle extends towards the partition. The partition is translucent. The tentacle seems to be an arm. The arm grows appendages. One begins tracing curves on the partition. Shambal’s jaw quakes.

If it is Karla, then she is about to pronounce the fate of my existence on yonder blue-green glass.

I don’t think it is glass, scum-boy.

No? It’s frosted something.

I think it is simply mist. Her fingers will poke through and trace caustic symbols. They’ll assail you with their power. You’ll once again become her slave. Maybe there’s another rock around here for you to get absorbed into.

A lone clarinet begins to play. It is a recording. They recognize that. The source is hard to discern, though. The sound seems to come from everywhere. Or perhaps it eminates from them.

A piano stumbles into the room. He thinks of a man shuffling. Each chord is a step. They are erratic. Instead of a determined straight line, the course zig-zags and turns without warning. The man reaches a barrier and must turn either right or left. He chooses one. Shambal breaks this reverie.

Is there only right or left? What if we had chosen one of those instead of straight? Would we not be here at this café, but instead still lost in the shroud? Do you hear the music?

I know the music. It is the music of constriction. We are constricted to worlds we have conceived throughout our lives. As we grow older, they grow smaller. Do you hear the piano? The chords are footsteps. Do you hear the right angles?

Shambal ponders this:

The steps are more even. The rhythm seems to have purpose now. At first it was like they were of a child learning to walk. Now that child is older. But now I hear that he repeats his steps again and again with only minor variations.

Yes, he retraces his path because he is constrained to a single world. He is in the process of creating that world. The occasional deviations are a fleshing out. Like all of us, we eventually carve a niche and stay only in that niche because safety, or should I say, security, is what we are created to crave from birth.

A pudgy sausage of flesh pierces the bulkhead. Or, rather, it appears to them that it does because the transluscence becomes wholly trasparent at that one point. The pinkish flab moves slowly at first, picking up pace and confidence with each stroke.

Backwards, from either incompetence or scorn, it is writing a menu for them onto the partition.

Discussions involving swabbing the anuses of one’s in-laws always lead to constructive conclusions. I’ve pondered many times in this journal and in many other tomes lying about about how my upbringing shaped me. Marred me, rather. I sometimes think whether I can put a positive spin on my childhood and how it affected my current personality.

I’d firstly like to say that it taught me resilliance. I was for years bombarded with scurrility from my so-called peers. Even my friends found negative reinforcement their favourite means of making a point. So, does criticism slide off me like, for example, boiling wax? If that is the case, then past wounds from said wax have become scars. I feel nothing when the taunts come.

However, I’d say this is more numbness than resilliance.

It’s more a function of growing older than learning from constant barrages to ignore insecure cunts who attempt to lower you into the netherworld with words of scorn. Simple writing / music / art / enunciation - bashing would break me into shards when I was a teen. Reassembly took days, even weeks when certain slivers flew to distant parts. I suppose somewhere along the way I found more cohesive glue.

I rebelled because I was offered no freedom of expression. Many things I did were looked on with suspicion. Poems I wrote in High School threatened to get me into counselling. Any view which pointed to the abstinence from religion tripped me up.

tripping me up …

My writing this evening is tripping me up. I stumble through the words and I am changing the subject because all the previous paragraphs have been covered ad nauseum. To what am I changing the subject? Well, I am changing the subject to the topic of changing subjects.

What does it mean to drift from position to position in my mind while writing casually about it? I’m typing as quickly as possible while still attempting to hold coherent sentences together with a glue which was not aforementioned in this entry. I should be proud that I am able to do such a thing without falling flat onto my pointed proboscis.

The television blares from the other room. My door is securely closed, but the noise lurches into my ears. It is distracting, dismaying and stiltifying. I know it brings my parents comfort, however, just as religion does.

We are back to conformity! Dogma! Living by a set of rules is easier than creating one’s own principles to adhere by. I have a book that tells me what I can and cannot do, otherwise there is anarchy, eh? I don’t despise all dogma, but I am deeply suspicious of it. Vague philosophy seems more suitable for my life than concrete rules.

I’ve held this belief since my early teens, though I am sure I never articulated it in the manner I just did in the previous paragraph. In fact, I’d like to read something I scribed back then. Sure, I’d most likely find it daft, but it would be telling at least of my budding brain’s processes. When I stretch my memory back to when I was twelve or thirteen, the bare bones impressions cannot possibly be accurate.

Flashes.

The flashes can be assembled, but make little sense in the context of sitting on my bed even in Seminole at this moment.

Were I able, I’d absorb all of the memories this bed has, for I have been contained in it intermittently for over thirty years. I could sop it all into my spongy brain. Once the next millenium rolls around and external brains are common, I’ll be sure to upload everything pertaining to this bed into it, tar and bzip it up and share it on whatever the equivalent of Dropbox is.

Sucking information directly from objects would make creative writing unnecessary. Lists of objective facts will replace the novel. Imagination will become unnatural, even disdained. See that external USB drive? It’s a brain. When it makes contact with that water bottle you found in a trash heap in yonder alleyway, it will reveal the physical contact of the transient who was blind drunk sprawled atop it.

He didn’t even feel the crunchy lump of plastic under him as he clutched the teenage prostitute to him. Even though she was on top, his strength was too much for her. Even in the abyss of his intoxication, his body strived to pry her existence from her corporeal form.

The brain, later plugged back into the universal network, reveals the identity of the filthy transient. Over the next weeks, he is hunted down. When finally found in a slum near Olomouc, he is praised, given gifts of myrrh and osmium, and installed in a tenement. A small sum arrives at his door every Tuesday.

Thinking back, the transient who is no longer a transient considers the bare-bones reconstruction of that drunken night. He only comes up with blurs and flashes. Finally, he can only be content that he ridded the universe of another teenage floozy.

His name, of course, is Shambal. He goes into the kitchen to make a sandwich.

Pink Kolmteist

On slowly sloping hills where mägi house themselves, the grass grows in arbitrary blotches.

Shambal clutches the blanket around his shoulders with one hand. The other holds an old, wilted journal open between his legs. The stained blanket falls all about him. It’s his only protection from the chill. His proper clothing has long since rotted in the closet without a door. The resulting nest is a home for a mouse named Murida. She is saved for another story, however.

The entry in the journal he keeps rereading reminds him of those blotches. A hill with twin cemeteries rises above a town in his mind. The town is like a village, even if over one hundred thousand occupants might say otherwise. To Shambal, village is a spirit that inhabits a place and not a measurement of area or population.

He wants to trasform his putrescent blanket into new and shiny threads so he can board the train round the corner. He’d order a glass of white wine. He’d order another. He’d smoke a cigarette in the dining car. Later on a bit, he’d vomit into the rattling toilet. These thoughts are happiness to him.

He clutches the cloth tighter to his body. It is a new skin plastered to his old one.

If a blue flag (fluttering) means safety and a green flag (furled) signifies capitulation, then which flag (and which state) denotes synergy?

On each grave in the muslim cemetery is a green flag. Death is a sort of capitulation, after all. He squats in front of one and speaks in a low voice in a language the stone knows. The flag shivers. The grave denies him entrance.

He’d be buried there. That, rather than dissolving into a salty sea, he muses. He wants to turn the page of the journal, but is unable. He wants to board the train. It may be too late.

If this is his elongation, then he partially understands why the page cannot be turned. He is left to scrutinize the words and creep down the page more and more slowly. Surely there is a haiku at the end. They are his curse, those wretched poems. The lower half of his face cracks into a smirk when he realizes that he’ll never have to finish it. Lastly, he’ll be floating between the particles of penmanship of the final syllables.

Perhaps a fusion of consciousness is the summation of these eternities.

Shambal gets up to make a sandwich.

He uncrosses his eyes for a moment, then lets them drift back out of focus. For a few seconds, he clearly saw leaves in varying shades of green moving in slender lines like serpents rolling and squirming. Those reptiles took some hallucinagen or other. He thinks of ferns and then the fibbonacci sequence. Blotches of sloppy green swim in spirals in front of him.

He wants to stand. He tries to stand. The trap around his ankle does not allow him to. He settles back, wishing to regain strength.

Nataša had told him that she’d still be dying when he was crawling along the sand to have a final conversation with the sea. She had also told him which piece of music would be most delightful for his final journey. Naturally, in a purely Nataša-like way, she followed up with a disclaimer.

Since your final song will stretch into a widening eternity, you’ll have to choose wisely.

He smiles despite the pain in his ankle. He always felt smitten, confused or both when talking to the dissolved girl. He continues replaying the conversation in his thoughts.

A widening eternity? What does that mean? How can an infinity grow?

Though he saw her femurs melting and skin was flaking and drooling from her torso, she smiled. It lit up in his hara. A recurring thought came to him. Was this what Shambal was so apeshit about? What about the hide of my woman? What about Nataša’s dissolving skin? At the time, possibly because of the warmth in his hara, he did not think to fill his water bottle from the pool. She had replied.

Eternity is just an encapsulation of all that is. Beyond does not exist. In this case, your consciousness is what is. All that is. As you crawl along the sand with your fettered ankle dragging behind, and with a spritely companion bounding round you, the expanse of all that is - meaning you - stretches. You are never meant to reach its end. We are all immortal in this manner.

He lurches forward into the fern petals. Soft earth underneath gives easily to his fingers. He imagines worms carousing just below his fingertips. The soil is surely laced with ethanol. He knows the forest will soon break.

He begins to crawl.

Pink Kolmteist

The girl in the turquoise skirt comes again to flitter in the mindless breeze across my viewscreen as I haughtily ignore her.

A part of me considers Shambal a prophet. I despise prophets. A girl in a skirt so bright that I am blinded whilst trying to scope her legs walks by in intervals of approximately 13 minutes. Her earrings are also turquoise. They swing most likely to the beat that pulses through the earbuds above them. She cannot possibly be trotting to the rhythm, though, as her steps are erratic. Perhaps she is tipsy. I wouldn’t be surprised. After all, I am.

She never looks at me. I’m not too bothered since I consider myself at least transluscent, if not already completely transparent. If I am becoming like Shambal, it’s not really my fault. He is infectious. I’m not just talking about the sores on his skin.

I think he was referring to this girl in his last note. So, I must be haughty and ignore her. She ignores me, as I already mentioned, so my task is not difficult. She is not a replacement for Natascha, but an eidolon of Natascha. The corporeal are the real wraiths - especially to us ghosts. I said I am at least transluscent and I meant it.

She comes round again, shuffling on the sidewalk in the gait of a crippled goat. I concentrate enough this time to examine her legs. They are healthy enough. They are smooth and creamy. I’d reach out to touch, but I’d be disappointed that my hand wouldn’t just pass through. I fantasize this is a time loop. She experiences the same circuit around the park. Her death and rebirth are at the moment she passes a few metres in front of me.

The thought makes me feel Godlike. I think of Shambal and laugh. The girl is either out of earshot or ignores me. Or perhaps the corporeal cannot hear the transluscent.

Percussive shouts from muted strings beg tension from the illicit calm.

I’m actually sinking into the bench. If I don’t rise at some point soon, I’ll become one with it and forever be a part of this place. At least the skirted girl will be with me, though she won’t know it. Her stumbling steps make more sense on each revolution.

They have a pattern.

Every time one of her sneakers touches the concrete, a claw squeezes my brain. It’s attached to a wrist and forearm. They protrude from the upper back of my cranium. Farther back, there is a body. Atop perches a misshappen, slightly ovoid head. A smile cracks its lower third, but there are no other features.

The claw squeezes every time a sneaker hits the concrete. The squeal of strings played by an incompetent violist shouts from my neurons to the tips of my extremeties. Try as I might, I can’t even suppress an erection.